1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a safety structure for automatic opening/closing umbrella.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional automatic opening/closing umbrella as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H05-031003 includes a press button for opening the umbrella automatically by pressing the press button once and closing the umbrella automatically by pressing the press button once again. Such automatic opening/closing umbrella provides a convenient application and has a very large market share in the umbrella market of the United States, but the utility rate of such umbrella in Japan is not very high due to safety concern.
As a handle of the automatic opening/closing umbrella usually pops out when the umbrella is closed for storage, accidents caused by such umbrella occur frequently. In general, this issue does not exist if a rod is pushed into a handle part to close the umbrella before a click sound is produced. Accidents usually occur if insufficient force is applied to press the rod into the handle part, without entering into a completely locked-in condition. When the force applied by a user's hand for supporting the umbrella is released or the user's hand is released directly, the handle or the umbrella tip may pop out and hit a user's face or injure the user.
At present, the conventional automatic opening/closing umbrella prevents the aforementioned accident by prohibiting users to operate the umbrella when the umbrella is close to a user's face, but such protection is insufficient and inconvenient to users.